75th Anniversary Of The Bombing of Dresden.

Abbreviated is fine

 

You didn't drop it on Dresden did you?

 

Dresden was a legitimate target. It certainly falls into the category of the horrors of war, and it was American civilian revulsion to the photographic record of the results that altered the course of the Allied bombing campaign. It wasn't repeated elsewhere in Germany.

Dresden was a major troop transit rail hub for Nazi forces, and there were some factories involved in the production of arms and munitions there. Churchill's war council selected it as a target mostly because German forces left it virtually undefended and unprepared for aerial bombing. An urban myth of local (not British) origin circulated widely among the Dresden population throughout the war - that the Allies would never bomb the city because Churchill had an aunt who lived there. He didn't. Many in the city also believed that the Allies would never strike there because the city was architecturally "too beautiful to destroy." Wishful thinking

Moreover, Goebbels used the bombing as a propaganda tool, probably his last effective one, by making sure that photos of the charred ruins and bodies made their way into Allied press, but mostly by multiplying the actual death toll by 10 and claiming that 200,000 civilians perished. It's about the only case in which the Nazi regime saw advantage in claiming massive losses, so they vastly exaggerated those losses and made sure that domestic and international audiences were aware of the incident. It caused 11 year old boys and 70 year old men pressed into service defending the fatherland to grip their rifles a little tighter.

The Western Allies sent no message to the major Eastern Ally, the USSR, in the bombing of Dresden, other than that the fight goes on.

 

The German air force bombing of London killed an estimated 44,000 people and destroyed countless buildings, many historic. Thousands of children in London were sent to the countryside to live during the war to avoid being killed by the German bombing. If the German high command was obviously willing and eager to bomb London into surrender and had no problem with killing tens of thousands of British civilians, including children, then it forfeited any legitimate right to cry over the bombing of Dresden. One can legitimately say that most of the German war effort in the entire war involved making war on and killing by the millions civilians in the countries the German armies invaded.

 

The Nazi luftwaffe had destroyed cities long before their attacks on London, Guernica during the Spanish civil war, Warsaw, & Krakow in Poland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in Holland to name but a few.

 

The slaughter house 5 by Kurt Vonnonegut.
Science fiction infused novel.

Kurt was a pow in Dresden at the time.

The book was banned in North Dakota school library's.

You can watch it on DVD too.

The movie was interesting.

 

They bombed the shit out of Dresden with a pow camp in town. Civilians and pows.
Completely thoughtless operation.

 

I remember reading that in high school. It was how I 1st learned of Dresden

 

"Thoughtless"? There were 13 raids involving over 1,200 aircraft. They didn't all hit unintended targets. There actually was thought that went into it. Considerable thought. Dresden was the target, and they hit Dresden, planned in detail and with considerable thought, and executed.

Time has a way of allowing people not yet born at the time to later claim visionary status. You're suggesting that crews of more than 1,200 aircraft were sent up with over 3,400 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs and told: "fly any distance in any direction and at any altitude you please, and just drop it anywhere that suits you," and by pure chance they all flew in the same direction and dropped all of their bombs on Dresden, Germany.